For writers of novels, short fiction, poetry, non-fiction, blogs, screenplays and plays
A room for every frame of mind.
Plan it, research it, write it, revise it, and publish it, all in one place. From a first note to an upload-ready manuscript or ebook.
MaciPadiPhoneOn the web, by invitation
Plan
Lay the book out on cards, in an outline, on a mind map or against a beat sheet, and see where every scene falls. Characters, places and the story's timeline live here too, so the plan and the people stay together.
More about Plan →
Research
Clip a web page, import your citations, keep a study page for each character and place, and write notes next to the chapters they feed. Select a name in the text and the dossier shows what the project knows about it. Everything is one project, not five apps and a folder of files.
More about Research →
Write
Write chapter by chapter or the whole book as one scroll, on a warm page in a face made for reading, with verse set in stanzas whose lines hold their steps. Word targets, writing sessions and a composition mode for when it's just you and the page.
More about Write →
Revise
Take a checkpoint before a big change and compare any two. Mark a revision pass so new words show in their own colour. Run the checks every draft needs, from spelling and repeated words to a word written two ways and the slips you stop seeing, and step through them chapter by chapter.
More about Revise →
Publish
A standard manuscript, an ebook, a print interior with running heads and page numbers, a book of poems, an audiobook, or a submission pack with the synopsis and query letter: adjusted with plain controls, previewed before it's built, checked after, ready to upload.
More about Publish →
In the Plan room
Think on paper.
A mind map that looks drawn by hand: notes in pencilled ovals, boxes and clouds, joined by sketched lines. Press Tab for a joined note and Return for the next, and brainstorm as fast as you type. Drag scenes and characters onto the map, write on it with Apple Pencil, and when the ideas settle, turn the notes into scenes in the manuscript.
More about mind maps →
Not only novels.
Every kind of project gets the same five rooms, and what its writer needs on top.
Novels and stories
Parts, chapters and scenes, a cast with study pages, beat sheets and continuity checks, and a short-story collection's own ebook and manuscript formats.
Series and trilogies
Keep the books of a series together in the Library, each its own project, under your name or a pen name, and find them by either.
Memoir and nonfiction
Sources and citations beside the chapters, footnotes in Chicago style, and a bibliography from the project's own sources.
Poetry
A collection of poems set as verse, each line's indent held in every format, as a half-letter paperback, an ebook or a Word manuscript. A book of poems →
Blogs and newsletters
A journal of posts from idea to published, numbered and dated as they go out, ready to paste into Substack. For bloggers →
Scripts
Screenplays, stage plays, musicals, radio plays and sitcoms, each in its industry's format. For screenwriters →
Your work, everywhere.
The same project on your Mac, iPad and iPhone through your own iCloud, encrypted on the way. Daily backups you can open. Nothing to sign up for.
Bring your book with you
Import a Scrivener project with its history, a Word manuscript, a Fountain or Final Draft script, a Scapple board or a Substack publication. Poems arrive as verse. Coming from Scrivener →
Keep your own copies
Every project is a package you can export, back up and open again. A plain-text mirror keeps the words in files you can read anywhere.
Readers and co-writers
Send beta readers a reading copy and get their notes back in the margin. Share a project with a co-writer or an editor, end to end encrypted.
An assistant, on your terms
Connect an AI assistant to a project through MCP and let it read, comment and suggest, with a note from you on what it should know. It never changes a word you've written, and it's off until you turn it on.
By a writer, for writers.
Hi, I’m Mark. I write novels and short fiction, and I’ve tried my hand at screenplays as well. For years I wrote them in apps that made me think about the app: how to compile for different submission formats, syncing between my Mac and iPad without losing data, an interface that fought the way I plan.
So I built the one I wanted, with a room for each kind of work and nothing between me and the page. Now, Five Rooms is what I write in every day. I hope you like it too.
Mark Perry
Write the thing.
Five Rooms is coming to the Mac App Store and the App Store. Until then, read about the rooms, or ask for an invitation to the web version.